SICK AT HEART

Arnie Spector was one of the lucky ones, for heart disease is a treacherous assassin. Silent for years, this killer often strikes with scant warning. Cardiovascular illness, which accounts for half of the deaths recorded in the United States each year, affects all of us: men, women, blacks, whites, the elderly, even the young; nearly a quarter of fatal heart attack victims are below the age of sixty-five. As a comparison, cancer, although more feared, claims only a third as many victims as heart disease.

Over two thirds of deaths attributable to cardiovascular disease are occasioned by heart attacks or strokes. Heart attacks, which take about 520,000 lives annually, occur when the coronary arteries, which supply oxygen-bearing blood to the heart, become clogged and the oxygen-deprived heart muscle is damaged. If too much tissue is affected, the heart becomes so weakened it can no longer pump effectively. But even mild damage can disrupt the electrical impulses that govern the heart’s rhythmic beating, and this can lead to sudden death. Stroke, which claims another 150,000 lives each year, can also be caused by obstructed blood flow, this time to the brain, or by the blowout of a blood vessel supplying the brain.

All is not doom and gloom, however. The situation has improved radically over the past two decades. The incidence of fatal heart attacks has fallen by 25 percent, while the incidence of strokes has plummeted 40 percent. The reasons for this turnabout are clear: the fitness boom, which has brought home the importance of exercise in maintaining good health, a sharp decline in the number of Americans who smoke, an improvement in the diet of a significant portion of the population, and better diagnostic evaluation before a coronary event, including an aggressive campaign waged by the American Heart Association to detect and treat high blood pressure.

So the situation is improving. Still, it could be much better. Consider this: over 1.5 million Americans are stricken with heart attacks each year, more than one third of them fatal; heart failure afflicts an additional 2 million people, reducing the quality of their lives and limiting their activities; and millions more endure angina (chest pain or discomfort caused by narrowed coronary arteries) that causes them to live in fear as well as pain.

Medical experts agree that most of this suffering could be avoided if we all endeavored to adopt life-style changes that we already know reduce the odds of contracting heart disease. The first important step is to get into a regular program of exercise, which can eliminate, reduce, or help compensate for almost every major risk factor for heart disease. And, as we have seen, the exercise program that offers the highest benefit-to-risk ratio is swimming. So dig out your old bathing suit and get ready to take the plunge.

But first, to assure that there will be no backsliding of resolve, let’s examine the causes of cardiovascular illness and look at the ways swimming can improve your chances of avoiding this sneak thief of life.